Again, I'm not looking to Apple bash here, I just want to make sure this computer isn't defective.

A while back, my mother purchased a Mac Mini from our local Apple Store (the first one, actually, in Tysons Corner VA). We got it all set up and working, and it seemed pretty good (I apologize, I can't remember the exact model at the moment).

The problem now is that the computer is SLOOOOOW! I mean much slower than it ought to be. It just takes forever to do pretty much anything. What do I look for to troubleshoot this?

At first I thought it might be tied to flash in Firefox (her browser of choice), but even when I stop that (using that task manager equivalent in OSX) it doesn't seem like things improve much.

I don't think the system is getting tasked much. My mother uses Firefox and MS Office (which I guess could be a culprit). She looks at PDFs and prints stuff. You know, usual stuff. So I don't know why the computer is so darn slow!

Thanks for any help you can offer.